Kash offering improv sessions online during pandemic
Linda Kash, co-founder of improv group Klusterfork, is offering Zoom sessions for people to learn new performance skills, bringing laughter and joy into their lives during the pandemic.
Kash, best known for her performance as Kraft’s Philadelphia cream cheese angel from 1994 to 2011 started offering sessions via Zoom to help people, especially children, who might be affected by the pandemic.
Kash, who also teaches at the Peterborough Academy of Performing Arts, has been focusing on children and teens, she said.
“I have been lucky enough to be able to teach children and teens, elderly people and people who are corporate and people who are off the street as well,” she said.
“When the lockdown happened in the spring, I just started offering pay-what-you-can, because I was worried about the kids feeling alone, particularly the teens.”
In past sessions people have signed up as far away as Vancouver and Los Angeles to take classes through Klusterfork, she said.
Kash has been teaching improv and other skills since the mid-1980s at Toronto’s Second City, she said.
“That is kind of my foundation as an actor and I am just a major enthusiast for improvisation,” Kash said.
Klusterfork offers sessions for many skillsets from improv, singing, performance, pitch writing and standup, she said.
Sessions, which consist of six weeks of classes, once a week for an hour and a half, will go through many different topics and will focus on how to improve skills.
“There is some progress to the sessions,” Kash said. “Sometimes with standup and with the pitch class, if you have an idea for a show you want to pitch, it is better to go to every class because there is progress.”
She said every new session will offer something new.
“We are going to make it up as we go,” Kash said. “I am very interested in theatre and having some of my friends who do a lot of cartoon voices offer a voice-over class next session.”
There has been a lot of interest from people who want some information for the sessions, she said.
“It is a big commitment and I understand people are all waiting to see what is going to happen in the future,” Kash said.
“We are getting people who kind of always wanted to try it and are willing to invest because they need the distraction and they need to learn.”
Steve Ross, theatre actor and instructor with Klusterfork, said it helps keep people in shape, in the sense of their talent.
“It keeps our brains in shape, it keeps our voices in shape, it is just a chance to get online and do some coaching with people,” he said.
Ross, who has worked in theatre for about three decades, including at the Stratford Festival, has taught and instructed people in musical theatre and is returning to Klusterfork for another session of teaching. His students pick two songs, one theatre song and one pop song, to sing.
“I would just coach people,” Ross said. “I would give them some feedback we would try it again; we would try it different ways.”
The great thing about the classes being online is that you can be anywhere for the course, he said.
“We get the chance to do it all over and folks have the chance to register for stuff they normally wouldn’t be able to take. It’s great.”